Chamber Orchestra Works, From Intense to Zany

Part of the pleasure of hearing Ensemble ACJW, the group of young professionals formed under the auspices of Carnegie Hall and the Juilliard School, is considering the myriad options that lie before its members. Will they end up as soloists, orchestral players, educators, entrepreneurs?

This sense of possibility and uncertainty is not restricted to artists just starting out. Susanna Malkki, 45, who led Ensemble ACJW in an accomplished, vividly played, exceptionally ambitious concert on Saturday evening at Zankel Hall, is an experienced conductor at the highest levels, enough to be offered her New York Philharmonic debut next year, and in 2015-16 her Metropolitan Opera debut.

Yet she seems somehow still perched at the precipice of the important career that should, by all rights, be hers. Music director of the new-music group Ensemble Intercontemporain from 2006 until 2013, she has never been in charge of a major symphony orchestra. While that may be her preference, Saturday’s concert showed once more that she has the creativity and galvanizing talent to be a distinguished leader.

The program was a portrait of the chamber orchestra over the last 100 years, from Schoenberg’s epochal Chamber Symphony No. 1 (1906) to Jukka Tiensuu’s “Mora” (2012), by way of dazzling works by George Benjamin and John Adams from the early 1990s. The performance of the Schoenberg symphony set the tone: intense and lithe, yet with an irresistible sweetness and variety of color, from sandpapery horns to milky plucks. The string players of Ensemble ACJW were vibrant enough to outweigh the numbers of winds and brasses stacked against them.

Mr. Adams’s Chamber Symphony (1992) is a postmodern homage to Schoenberg’s work, quotations and all, but shot through with the zany spirit of cartoon music. It travels from a swinging clarinet solo in the first movement to a suave bassoon melody over a repeating (“walking”) double-bass line in the second. Mr. Adams expertly moves both that melody and bass line through the ensemble before the frenetic final movement, tellingly titled “Roadrunner.”

The playful “Mora” offered a virtuosic guest performance by the tenor Topi Lehtipuu, who, like Mr. Tiensuu and Ms. Malkki, is Finnish. Standing in the midst of the ensemble, he was alternately frisky and malicious in strings of syllables — no text was provided — and vocal effects that the players sometimes echoed and sometimes elicited. The second movement begins, amusingly, with the instruments simulating tuning, then turns poignantly dirge-like. The third movement is a scherzo featuring a dazzling vocal cadenza, from metallic throat singing to aggressive declamation.

In Mr. Benjamin’s “Three Inventions” (1993-95), Ms. Malkki guided the ensemble through constant, kaleidoscopic changes that take place within slowly evolving larger structures. The playing was agile and sensitive, the conducting inspired.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: Chamber Orchestra Works, From Intense to Zany. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe